Paper Play by Kathi

Pazzles Bar

Saturday, January 25, 2014

I decided I wanted to make this cigar box with a nautical theme, so I used some JustRite stamps on some pale gold Core'dinations Pearl CS and gold embossing powder. I shaded the edges with gold ink, then cut some gold mirror card with some Spellbinders dies.

When I went to do the inside, it looked too fancy to cover up the design. The label was quite interesting, and it had raised sides which were covered with silk like red cloth.

It's difficult to think of different ways to finish the insides of the boxes, so for this one, I decided to make four compartments out of bass wood, and make red painted covers for each section. Red ribbon was used to attach the compartments and act as hinges.

Each cover has a little knob made from jewelry findings to lift them up. I think this one would work well for a man.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

I'm giving you a break from Christmas cards, and posting another of the Spellbinders cards I made last fall. This one is made from Majestic Labels Twenty Five.

All the dies were cut on white CS and shaded with a Brilliance pink color, and it was matted with pink and white CS. After I finished the card, it needed something, so I added a flower I had made with a punch to the center, and some Liquid Pearls.

I love these dies, they make it so easy to make a beautiful and intricate looking card!

This one also reminds me of my blog friend Jill, because she likes pink.

Friday, January 10, 2014

Sorry about more Christmas things in January, but I'm still catching up on posting projects I finished last fall.

This is another altered cigar box. This one had a sliding top, so my husband drilled a hole in the top, and I added a little knob so it would be easier to open. The knob and the edges of the box were shaded with Viva Decor Inca Gold, then I applied some wood veneer to all the sides. The Marianne Creatables were cut and embossed from a lighter veneer, and shaded while still in the die with the Inca Gold, then the whole thing was varnished.

I made it while the shop was still open, and a lady paid me for it while I was still working on it. She wanted it for her husband for Christmas. I love it when that happens!

Thursday, January 9, 2014

This card reminds me of those Christmas services we used to go to on Christmas eve when I was a child. Those services were magical!

The card was done with an old PSX stamp, some dark blue CS, watercolors I made from PearlEx, silver EP, silver mirror card, and several Spellbinders dies. I photographed it two ways, one to show the depth, and one to show the shimmer.

I really liked this card on the diagonal, but it posed two problems. One was how to make it so it opens right, and the other is that it won't stand up without an easel. I solved the opening issue by making a blank rectangular card the same size as the church image part and attaching it behind the card, but it still needs an easel. I suppose I really should invest in some easel dies. :-)

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

I love the Anna Griffin embossing folders, and decided to try making an embossed winter card using them for the background. The sentiment is a Sizzix folder I have had for years. This was a very quick and easy card to make, because it didn't need much embellishment because of all the texture.

I embossed light blue CS, and used my square foam shading thingies to go over the embossing with white ink to make it look frosty. Everything is matted with Core'dinations Pearls CS in white, and mounted dimensionally.

Monday, January 6, 2014

I bought this embossed paper at an art supply store a while ago, and last summer I decided to do an altered cigar box with it. The paper was shaded with Delicata Golden Glitz, and outlined with a metallic gold pen, after trimming to size, or cutting with Spellbinders. All the paper was matted with white CS, which was also outlined in gold.

The outside was decorated with flowers, butterflies and Liquid Pearls.

On the inside, I cut some dividers out of basswood and painted them with pink acrylic paint. The latches on the front have pink Liquid Pearls on them, to make them match the box better.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Here is a card I made with the embossed shell I posted yesterday. The glitter was coming off as I was making it, so I tried spraying the embossed design with Krylon. It worked so well on this shimmery blue art paper that I tried spraying the irises I made as well. The Krylon didn't react well with DCWV shimmery paper, and removed the shimmer on the iris one. It also removed some of the lilac color, so if you try krylon, spray a test swatch first.

The shell layer is matted with Cordinations Pearls, and since I seem to get so many of those expensive gold and silver pens which are old and don't work, I tried a Sharpie Metallic Silver pen to outline the white. The Sharpie isn't as shiny as the expensive pens, but at least it worked.

The next layer is DCWV Glitzy Glitter paper, and is also matted with the Pearl CS, then mounted on a pearl card. Both matted layers were mounted dimensionally.

I took two photos, one shows the colors and dimensions better, and the other shows the shimmer and sparkle.

Well, I have to go see to my mother now, I'll try to do some visiting tonight.

Friday, January 3, 2014

I have wanted to try embossing paste on a card for a long time, and got inspired by this tutorial by Shaz Brooks.

For my examples, I used some old Anna Griffin stencils I have in my stash. I cut the pearlescent blue and lilac papers to the same size as the stencils because I was afraid I might mess them up if I cut them after they dried.

I did everything else the way Shaz explained it, except I couldn't find my pallette knives, so I used a plastic knife. I loved her idea of using baby wipes on the stencils, and I did that as well.

The only kind of paste I could find in my area was Liquitex Flexible Modeling Paste, and it seemed to work well. After I removed the stencil, I sprinkled on some ultrafine glitter that I had in an old spice bottle. The glitter was from some painted ceramic kits I had bought years ago. I had never used it, and had put it into the bottle for later use.

The plastic knife gave me a bit of a corrugated cardboard type look because of the serrated edges of the knife, but it wasn't too bad. The designs are much sharper in person than in the photos because it has been freezing, snowy and dark here, so I can't get a good photo. I was very pleased about how fine the detail came out, except for a few of the little flowers in the top of the iris one, where I managed to smudge it a bit. There really is a lot more fine detail in person.

Anyway, since I did them last night, they are now dry, and now I get to make cards with them!

Thursday, January 2, 2014

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and hope you have the best year ever!

I haven't posted much this month because it's been very busy, both helping my mother out, ice storms, snow storms, power outages, and a trip to New York to see the kids and grandchildren.

I made this card earlier in the month using Wilton Silicone molds made for cakes with my Martha Stewart air dry clay.

The card base is ivory CS, with some golden colored, textured, handmade paper which resembles sand, but has a sheen to it. The shells were shaded with gold ink, and a label was made using the same paper, and some cream colored handmade paper which was stamped with the same gold ink, using a sentiment from JustRite.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

I bought this little cabinet on clearance quite a few years ago. It was missing some of the knobs and other parts, so it was pretty cheap.

I had a little bit more of this paper, and since I love it, I didn't want to cover it up too much, so the cabinet isn't too fussy. The base coat is some old Apple Barrel Blue Mist. This color was retired quite a few years ago, and I was hoarding what I had left, waiting for the right project. It matched the blue in the paper perfectly. The inside is an ivory color.

The gold is Inka Gold Metallic Rub. It isn't as brassy looking in real life as it is in this photo. If you haven't tried the Inka Gold rubs, try them, they are wonderful! They have a bees wax base, and can be used on most surfaces. If they start to dry out, just add a little water to them. When they are used on wood, they dry to a hard surface, which won't rub off, but you can also paint with them like watercolors, or rub them onto your paper with your fingers or daubers. They are really versatile!

I went around the outside of each paper panel with gold ink, and added gold outline stickers and jewelry findings as accents.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Sorry I have been missing for so long, but it's been busy here lately.

I have been doing two more projects with my air dry clay and silicone molds, one was a card, and the other is an altered cigar box. I'm still putting layers of varnish on the box, so it's not ready to be photographed, and it's too dark today to photograph the card, so I'm showing some coasters I made last fall. I made them for the Christmas show that never happened, so they are in my shop waiting for next summer.

These were made using some unglazed ceramic tiles I bought quite a few years ago. The stamps are mostly old PSX stamps, as well as one or two old Stampendous ones, and a couple of other brands I've had for years. They were stamped with Stazon black, and painted with ordinary craft acrylics, then coated with a couple of layers of water based varnish, and sprayed with Krylon.

They were all painted with the same colors of paint, and match in real life, but some were photographed in full sun, some outside on cloudy days, and some, inside on rainy days, so the colors look a little different.

Anyway, if you can get hold of some unglazed tiles, it's really fun and easy to stamp and paint, and the tiles make great coasters for Christmas presents!

Sunday, November 24, 2013

This morning I showed some silicone molds I got, and a Martha Stewart Crafters Clay kit in this post.

These are the things I made. I definitely will be wanting more molds, and more white clay. It was fun and easy to work with, and I will be able to use the molds with my Fimo as well.

I didn't really like working with the colors. It takes a lot of practice to use two colors in a mold, and not have one color squish into the other, but I think I will practice more with using two colors in the cameo. I also don't like the pink and colored things I made as well as the white ones. I tried mica flakes, glitter and PearlEx in them, and I liked the Pearlex, but even though I used very small mica flakes, they were sort of big on the finished castings. The glitter wasn't bad.

Using colors would be okay if you don't care about seeing detail in your things, but I'd rather paint and shade mine after they are dry, so I can show how much detail they have.

I wish the detail showed up in this photo, but it is dark here before 4:00 now, so I had to use a flash and it washed everything out.

I do like the amount of detail in everything I made from all of the molds. I used parts of all of them, and they all worked well. I had to wait until they dried a bit to remove a few things from the molds, but the only one that I had to be really careful with was the kelp from the wilton mold. That one had a lot of really tiny branches on it, but I managed to get it out without too much trouble.

Using these molds and the clay was really fun, and I can't wait to see what they look like when I paint or shade them!

My birthday is in a couple of weeks, and my mother wanted us to take her to AC Moore so she could get me some birthday presents.

While we were there, I decided to buy one of the Martha Stewart Craft Clay kits. The only one they had was the heirloom kit, but that's okay, because I really liked the molds that came with it.

I have been looking at these for a long time, but what made me decide to buy them was that I had bought a silicone mold from Mod Podge, and some of their glue stick type things a few weeks ago and didn't like them, but I needed something I could use in the mold.

I had also been looking at silicone molds since I bought the Mod Podge one, and had found so many beautiful ones made for baking on the internet. I did a Pinterest page of many of them here. They are gorgeous, so go look at them!

Anyway, after seeing those molds, I decided to get the MS kit, and some Wilton molds. My mother got me a couple more of the MS molds as well, but I can't have them until my birthday. :-)

I wish I had bought more of the white clay while I was there, because I have a feeling I am going to need it. Oh well, it's something to ask Santa for! I've seen people mixing it with PearlEx on the internet, and I really want to try that!

The red, yellow, blue, brown, and white clay were in the kit, along with a couple of white plastic tools, some florist tape, and some florist wire in case you want to make one of the beautiful roses in the instructions.

The small round blue molds were also in the kit. The two large blue ones are from Wilton, and I kept the photos that were with them so I could use them for future reference. Those photos are at the top of the picture. Even though some of them are quite large, I thought that they would be fun on cigar boxes. The orange ones at the top, are the Mod Podge ones.

Friday, November 22, 2013

It was really difficult to get a photo of this card. One shows the detail, and the other shows the shimmer.

I used the Spellbinders 3D M-Bossabilities Rustic Wreath Folder on dark green CS, then used one of those square foam shading things with Delicata Golden Glitz to shade it.

The sentiment was done with the same ink and a JustRite stamp. The gold behind it was done with gold mirror card and a Spelllbinders tag die. I fussy cut the green paper to fit inside it.

The card was matted with gold mirror card, and gold pearls were added as accents. It looks much prettier in person.

I'm sort of depressed this year. Usually we have a big Christmas Craft show, and I count on it to make money for Christmas, but this year they aren't having it, so any Christmas cards I make that I don't send myself will have to wait until next summer before I get a chance to sell them. I've tried both eBay and Etsy, but I always spend more money selling than I actually make. I sure wish we were in a bigger area where there are lots of shows.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

These are some more flowers I made. Most of them are from McGill punches, but the three little roses are from Spellbinders Bitty Blossoms.

The yellow on the roses is much paler than it looks in the photo, and the greens in the leaves aren't as bright either, but I took this photo at night.

I was pretty happy with the McGill flowers, especially since it was my first try, but I think I need more practice with the Bitty Blossoms. I'm not at all happy with them. I have wanted those dies for a long time because of the beautiful flowers Marisa Job has made with them, but mine don't look at all like hers. I will practice some more though, and I'm sure they will get better! I also wish I had shaded the outside of the yellow petals on the pansy with purple. I think it would have looked more real that way. The center of the pansy and the stamen on the Calla Lilly are the ultrafine orange crush Flower Soft.

I also played around with some premade roses I got on clearance at Michaels last year. All of these were white, but I used some Brilliance stamp pads, and different brands of glitter sprays to color them. Some of the flowers were colored with more than one shade of spray. The ones which still look white have pearl shades on them so they shimmer in real life. I've found that I like buying white flowers best, because then I can color them to match my projects.

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

This is the day of the week where we all go snooping around peeking at each other's desks. If you want to join us, hop on over to Julia's blog, to see what it's all about.

I've been MIA for a few months while I had my shop open for the summer, but I hope I will be able to get back in the swing of things now that summer is over.

This photo was taken on Tuesday evening, since I have to pick everything up each time I finish. I was finishing up two different projects at once, so I have a strange mixture on my workdesk.

First I finished up a card that I posted Tuesday night by adding rhinestones to it. The card is on my desk, and the two blue baskets are where I keep my Rhinestones and pearls during the winter. In the summer they are sorted by color on a turn-around display thing. It's much handier that way, but it takes up too much room to bring it home for the winter.

I was also finishing up some flowers I made from McGill punches and Spellbinders Bitty Blossoms. Those are sitting on top of a container of embossing powder while they dry. All my embossing powder is in flat plastic boxes. It's easy to use this way, because you just put your card into the box and shake, but it takes up a lot of room if you have a lot of colors.

The black rectangular thing on my cutting mat is my flower embossing mat. The cup contains my embossing styluses, pens, and other things. You can also see part of my Fiskars trimmer, ATG, heat gun, scissors, dimensional tape, Really Useful Boxes, a craft knife, and my antique box, which contains the small things I use at every session.

Underneath the cutting mat is my non stick craft mat. It's on a sample wallboard paneling thingy. I find it really easy to keep it on the wallboard thing under the cutting mat. That way I don't have to put it away every time, and when I want to switch back and forth between cutting and doing messy things, I just keep my cutting mat on one side of it, and I can use both at once. Before I started doing this, I forgot about putting my project back onto the cutting mat, and I cut through the craft mat. :-( I also used to forget, and use my heat gun on the cutting mat, which warps it. Now I usually remember to put my project on the craft mat first, before embossing.

Please ignore the mess on the side of the desk. Those are boxes of supplies and things, and they aren't very neat after digging through them trying to find things!

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

I frequently save pretty tags to recycle later on cards. I usually throw them into a drawer where I keep unfinished things I wasn't happy with.

For this card, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to make, so I looked into my unfinished parts drawer, and found this tag. It was a polished silver with embossed shiny silver details. I matted it with Core'dinations white Pearl CS and silver mirror card.

Next, I embossed another piece of the pearl CS, trimmed it close to the embossing, and mounted it onto more pearl. This was matted with more silver and more pearl, and mounted onto a pearl card.

The matted Christmas motif was mounted onto the embossed part dimensionally, then silver rhinestones were added. It was fairly quick to make, and I was quite happy with the results!

Monday, November 18, 2013

This is another card I made a few months ago with dies from Marianne Creatables.

The design was cut from Core'dinations white pearl CS, and shaded with Brilliance Pink, then mounted onto some pink Core'dinations Gemstones CS. It was matted with gold mirror card, mounted onto a white card, and accented with roses, a bow, and pink and white rhinestones.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

I made this card about a month ago when I got my new Spellbinders. It was done using Elegant Labels Four and Opulent Ovals. The paper is white CS and a pale gold Core'dinations Pearl CS, and all shading was done using Viva Decor Inka Gold Metallic Rub. Most of the layers were mounted with dimensional tape, and Liquid Pearl accents were added.

I photographed it twice, once to show the shimmer, and once to show the depth.

I love these elegant new Spellbinders dies. They make it so easy to create an intricate card with just a few die cuts!

Friday, November 15, 2013

Last September I made a card from an old JustRite stamp set I had. When one of my best customers saw it, she commissioned me to make two more cards with the other two stamps in the set. This is the second one.

The CS is a generic ivory, and metallic copper and green CS. The DP is some very old Anna Griffin CS.

The sentiment and frames were stamped with VersaMark, and embossed with gold EP, then cut with the matching JustRite dies by Spellbinders. I don't remember what color I used for the shading. All layers were outlined in gold, and some were mounted dimensionally. Green pearls were added as accents.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

I finally got internet back again. It's been about two weeks since I could actually get a whole page to load, but now it is working again. It's still slow, but it's better than nothing!

Last year I bought this angel stamp on clearance at Michaels when we were in New York. I thought she was so cute, and would be fun to color, but since I bought the stamp right after Christmas, and I was tired of Christmas cards, I had to wait almost a whole year to make a card with her.

She was colored with a combination of Copics, Brilliance inks, and Viva Decor Inka Gold Metallic Rub, after stamping her with VersaMark and embossing her in gold.

The fame surrounding her was done with Spellbinders Elegant Labels Four, from gold mirror card. This was mounted on a piece of Core'dinations Pearl CS, which I embossed with the same die, and cut a little larger than the frame. I ran a gold ink pad around the edge of this, and mounted it onto a slightly larger card made from the same CS.

The panel she is on was cut from Labels Four, and Liquid Pearls were added as accents.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Sorry I can't get around to visit. Saturday afternoon we started having internet problems again. We have been having them off and on for a few weeks, but now it's more off than on. It took over an hour to load this page to post on, and it doesn't even have many graphics on it. I absolutely hate Fairpoint. I pay for DSL every month, and can't even load a blog page, never mind watch you tube. Most people who are in areas which have cable have switched to Time Warner, but we don't have cable on our road.

Anyway, while I'm mostly without internet, I've been making flowers. I had a bunch of McGill punches, and have been playing with those. I also finally got Spellbinders Bitty Blossoms, but haven't been happy with the results. I can't wait until internet is back so I will finally be able to see tome tutorials to see what I am doing wrong. So many people have made some beautiful flowers with the Bitty Blossoms. Hopefully there are some on the internet that don't use you tube.

Luckily, I had downloaded all the McGill .pdfs a few months ago, so I can play with those. So far, I've done a pink and white lily, a purple clamatis, and a calla lily. They're in the largest size, but I think I'm going to try some in smaller sizes so they fit on cards better. I also have four of the Sizzix flower dies, and had downloaded the .pdfs for those a while back, so I can't wait to try them!

Saturday, November 2, 2013

This card uses the Spellbinders 3D M-Bossabilities Folder Framed Labels Eighteen. I thought pink would be a very pretty color for it, and also put a smile on the face of my blog friend Jill. The embossing folder reminds me of wallpaper and wainscotting in a house. Originally I tried to use white CS and use the letterpress technique to make the bottom pink with white on the raised edges, then I was going to go over the white embossing on top, and make it white with pink embossing, but my letterpress techniques don't always work out very well. That went into a scrap drawer until I could see if I could salvage it.

For the second try, I embossed pink CS and used white ink to go over the raised portions. Next, I cut and embossed two sizes of Labels Eighteen, shaded them with white, and used a white Gellyroll pen to outline inside the die. The sentiment is from JustRite, and was stamped and embossed with white ink and EP.

The labels were mounted dimensionally, and the card was accented with pearls and a bow.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

This is an old Stampendous stamp I've had for years. It was stamped with VersaMark, and embossed with Frantage Aged Hunter. Next, I ran the VersaMark pad around the outside and added more of the aged hunter for a border, and painted inside the oval with Twinkling H20s pearl gold. The holly berries were colored with a gold Gellyroll pen.

Gold pearls were added to two of the corners, but they still looked sort of blank, so I decided to add a bow. Most of the ribbon I had didn't look right, so I tried some old green and gold rayon stuff I've had for years. It was originally made for knitting with. The colors were perfect for the embossing powder, but it was quite thin, so I braided it and made a bow. I really wanted to add tiny jingle bells to it, but I couldn't find any small enough, so I decided on these little stars I had in my stash.

After that, the bottom corner needed something, so I added a few stars there too, then I matted and mounted it. All the paper is Core'dinations Pearl and gold mirror card.

For this card, I used lots of layers of Core'dinations pearl CS in white and pale gold. I love the heavy weight of this CS, and the shimmer is beautiful. It was stamped with VersaMark, and embossed with gold EP, then cut and embossed with JustRite's Nested Oval Medallion Labels Dies for the frame, and a Spellbinders oval die for the flower layer.

The frame and the flowers were painted with some watercolors I made from Pearl EX micro pearl. The top photo shows the shimmer of the paints and paper, and the bottom photo shows the detail.

Delicata Golden Glitz was used to shade inside the oval to add more contrast to the flower layer, and both layers, plus the pale gold layer underneath were edged with the same ink, then I used a gold Gellyroll pen to trace inside the oval die.

Next I cut four medallions from Spellbinders Fleur De Lis Pendants, which were shaded while still in the die with more Golden Glitz. These were layered over the background paper, and the medallions were mounted dimensionally on top of that.

Tiny fabric flowers were added to each corner, and liquid Pearls and a bow were added as accents.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Even though I sold this card less than five minutes after I made it, I don't really like it. I thought I'd put it on here anyway, to show how I did the reflection.

I had seen a lot of posts about stamping onto plastic and pressing the plastic on the card to make the reflection, but I thought there was less room to mess it up if I just stamped it onto vellum and mounted the vellum so the image was reversed.

First, I shaded a piece of white CS and a piece of vellum using VersaMagic Aegean Blue. next, I stamped my trees onto the CS and the vellum, and cut the vellum just below the stamping.

To attach the vellum, I put some Usartquest Perfect Paper Adhesive over the black base of the trees on the stamped side, then turned it over and put it under the CS image so the backside of the stamping showed through the vellum, and the trees were reversed to match the ones on top. I liked the effect of how the vellum image was a bit lighter than the image on the CS.

Then I wasn't sure how I wanted to finish the card. I was planning on it being a rectangular card, but when I held this Spellbinders Grand Label over it, it was the perfect shape to outline the shape of the stamping, so I cut and embossed it. The mat was shaded with the same Aegean Blue, only darker, and I used a blue Gellyroll pen to outline the shapes.

Rather than make the whole card in this shape, I wanted it to stand up, so I decided to mount it onto acetate. I thought the acetate would be sort of like water, and would work well with the reflection. Then I cut, embossed, shaded and outlined a matching piece for the inside of the card and added some pearls.

It's not my favorite card, but it did use some new techniques I had never tried before. I hope it inspires you to try your own reflection, or to use some acetate on a card.

Monday, October 28, 2013

I really like this tree stamp from Inkadinkado, and wanted to use it as a backdrop to this church and sentiment from Our Daily Bread Designs. First, I stamped the trees onto some medium/dark blue CS lightly using white ink. Next the Church and sentiment were stamped and embossed with white ink and white EP, which made it stand out from the background.

I wanted the card to be all blue and white, but I didn't want the church to be solid white, so I scribbled it in with a white Gellyroll pen, which hid the trees you could see through the church, and also gave it some texture.

The image was matted with some silver mirror card and more blue CS, then mounted onto a white card, and a star "jewel" was added.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

I'm calling this one majestic because it is made with Spellbinders Majestic Labels Twenty Five and Gold Majesty Circles. It uses a shimmery blue CS from my stash, white CS, and the matting layer is actually gold mirror card, but this photo was taken outside on a dreary dark day, and the gold didn't reflect.

One of the things I miss about this die is there are some places I wish it was cut out rather than debossed so the background paper would show up. I decided to use Copics to shade some of the areas, but they are so fine that my coloring is a bit messy in some places. The card was also shaded through the dies with VersaMagic Aegean Blue, and I added Liquid Pearls as accents.

This week, I have been moving everything out of my shop to my house for the winter. I didn't realize how many wonderful things I have for card making until I had to move them all. It was a lot of work, but I feel thankful to have so much! My husband is saying once again that this is like living in a submarine. The house is really small, and with all my storage things, it leaves little room for getting around. I miss all the counters and space I had at the shop, as well as seeing so many people, but it will be fun having internet when I work on my cards again. (We don't have internet at the shop).

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

This card was kind of an experiment. I decided I wanted to do a 3D scene with Marianne Creatables on hills of snow. The top photo shows the card open.

This picture shows the card closed. I wanted the inside to show when the card was closed, so I made the bottom half smaller. It isn't as pretty as I wanted it to be, but it's kind of neat anyway.

It was kind of difficult figuring how to do it so it would pop up right. Each layer is one quarter of an inch in front of the one behind it, and was done with strips of CS scored and folded into little open boxes between each layer.

All the paper is Core'dinations Pearl, in white and gold. The die cuts were colored with a Viva Decor Inka Gold Metallic Rub, and the Sentiments were embossed with gold EP and shaded with the gold ink. The sentiment panels were cut with Spellbinders. The inside sentiments are from JustRite, and the one on the front is from Our Daily Bread Designs.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

I've had this shadowbox for over a year, but it took me this long before I decided what I wanted to put into it. I think the company that made it is 7 Gypsies. I got it back when Becca Feeken had her kit club. It was part of the kit for one of the months, but I knew I wanted to do something nautical with it.

Since I sold the shadowbox right after I made it a few months ago, I am writing the steps as I remember them. I know I used some distress ink on the outside, but I can't remember the color. It looks like it might have been a dark brown. I couldn't really get it to shade the wood, but it did shade inside the edges of the little cubicles.

The backs of the cubicles are lined with some white CS which I shaded with VersaMark Aegean Blue. The bottom ones were shaded lightly, and the top one was shaded darker so it would make borders on either side of the stamped image. The stamp is Isle Au Haut Light in Maine, (or Robinson's Point), and is from a stamp I bought for my mother years ago from a company no longer in business. It was colored and shaded using various inks and Ranger nibs, Fantastix, and sponge daubers.

Real Seining twine from a weir was used in each cubicle, and I glued various shells I found on the beach in front of the shop into each one. The glue dried clear, but it was still wet and white when I took this photo.

Years ago, I also bought a little kit which made tiny brass lobster traps, lobsters and bouys. They were a real pain to make, but I had them made up, and the lobsters and bouys all painted. I had mounted them onto mahogany bases, and since Stonington is the real lobster capital of the world, I decided to put one of them into the center top cubicle.

Monday, October 21, 2013

I made this card with my new Spellbinders 3D M-bossibility folder Shell Beauty. The shading isn't as messy in person as it looks in the photos.

For this one, I didn't want to cover up too much of the gorgeous embossing on this folder, so I kept the embellishments to a minimum.

I began by using an ink blending tool to shade the embossing and give it more dimension. The ink is Delicata Golden Glitz. Next, I ran the ink pad around the edges of the panel to add a hint of a darker border. The card it is mounted on is an ordinary white CS card, but I also shaded the border of that with the same ink because it looked better mounted onto a shaded card than a plain white one. The shading is much smoother in person. I think the shimmery ink didn't work very well with the camera.

Both sentiments are from different stamp sets by JustRite, and were cut and embossed with Spellbinders dies, and shaded to match the card, then mounted dimensionally. I really wanted the card to say "Best Wishes", but the only sentiment I have that fits this die and would work with this card is "Happy Birthday". I think I need to look for some simple sentiments that are this size, because I use the die a lot.

I also wanted to use this ribbon, but it is too stiff to look good as a small bow. The ends don't like to lie gracefully, so I cut them shorter, and added the ends underneath the bow. I kind of like the effect, they make it look a little more interesting this way. Then I added a few pearls to finish it up.

About Me

I live on a tiny island and have been married since January 1, 1971. We have one son, a lovely daughter-in-law, and three wonderful grandchildren.
In the summer, my mother and I run a gift shop, and that is where I sell my cards.